mgolawala

Just my hunch but Iran is a founding member of OPEC.

The UAE has had a long standing land dispute with Iran.

The recent barrage of missiles might have just pushed the UAE leadership to have lost patience with their northern neighbor.

This might be an act of protest.

I think it is worse than that.

I think being on GitHub (and seemingly open source) gives developers a false sense of security in that they assume the code is open and therefore community vetted and that the developer has nothing to hide.

I suspect people who would know not to download and run a random binary off the internet would download, compile and run projects from GitHub.

How is the exchange rate between modern money and "carolus guilders" calculated?

Something like a foreign exchange market cannot help determine this right?

In theory, could the exchange rate for $1 be made equal to 1,200 carolus guilders? (Effectively, making the bonds worthless)

Sure, but as long as they have a staff of a dozen people monitoring the transactions so that they can catch and fix/block/revert the occasional fraud it still works out cheaper than hiring and maintaining those 700 call center workers. Each case helps build a library of business rules.

Eventually you would have guardrails programmed into a separate system where the LLM simply doesn't have the permissions needed to perform actions not permitted by the business rules.

It is the same idea as behind the self checkout counter at stores. Sure you lose a little in shoplifting/fraud, but it might still work out to cost less over all.

That’s classic ADHD. People who have it are able to hyper focus on things they find interesting.

Thank you for pointing this out.

Houses can be cheap, or they can be a good investment. Not both.

I think I read that here on hacker news a few years ago, and it has stuck with me.

The valuation of the company has little to do with the equation of how much profit has been made in the past. It is focused on the companies profit potential in the future. This has always been the case.

Sears or Ford may have produced a ton more in profit than was, as you say, put into the company. But the current valuation is based on what profit the market believes it will produce in the future.

“Because our population exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet, and if it does not do so already, will likely do so in the future, and if it does not do so in the future, it is still a good idea to have a backup plan for our descendants in case we manage to wreck this planet some how. Having a plan B just makes sense doesn’t it? Bet you the dinosaurs wished they had one”

I have noticed the same effect as well. There is a noticeable difference to the quality of my sleep on the days I have consumed caffeine and the days that I have skipped it. The quality of your sleep likely has effects on your mood, energy levels and over all stress levels.

However, I was referring to the direct effects of caffeine on your stress and anxiety levels. I would go so far as to say that if you are taking steps to reduce your stress and anxiety levels, quitting caffiene should be on the list of some of the first things you try. (Alongside the usual advice of good sleep, exercise, meditation and diet)

Some reading for those who are interested:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4668773/

"After adjusting for additional dietary, demographic, and lifestyle covariates, positive associations between total weekly caffeine intake and anxiety and depression remained significant"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34871964/

"Caffeine also increases anxiety in PD patients as well as among healthy adults at these doses although the exact relationship between caffeine-induced anxiety and panic attacks remains uncertain. The results suggest that caffeine targets important mechanisms related to the pathophysiology of PD."

https://web.archive.org/web/20200130090750/https://www.psych...

"Regular consumption of high levels of caffeine can lead to a condition known as 'caffeinitis'" which is characterized by chronic subjective anxiety"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine-induced_anxiety_disor...

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/anxiety-and-caffei...

I am surprised no one has mentioned chronic caffeine consumption and its role in promoting anxiety and stress.

Use a wireless charging setup.

It has been standard on most flagship phones for a few years now.

I rarely (if ever) use the port to charge my devices anymore. They just look messy, wear out and take more time to plug in and un plug.

I am not an economist, but here is my theory on the whole thing (would love to hear if there is a flaw with this reasoning!):

The fundamental problem is that a wealth of a society is determined by its productive capacity. A society with more homes, more cars, more phones, more food, more clothes, more university classrooms, more hospitals and doctors, more medicine, (you get the picture)... more good and services is wealthier.

A society with more dollars but without the corresponding increase in all of those things is no wealthier.

You can magic up trillions of dollars and hand them out to each and every individual currently alive in the US or for that matter the planet. Give each person a billion dollars. You still would not suddenly end poverty, or hard ship or hunger or anything else.. that money is still used to buy the goods and services which are being produced at the same rate as before.

When we distributed trillions of dollars over the last couple of years while simultaneously having lockdowns for covid, we not only added money to a system without adding corresponding productive capacity. We did the opposite.. we reduced the number of homes being built and maintained, we reduced the number of clothes being manufactured, we reduced the amount of education we provided, we reduced the amount of health care provided, we reduced the number of vacations and restaurant meals that were provided, we reduced the number of cars being made (you get the picture)... we created a backlog of unmet demand.

The prices would likely have gone up even without the money printing due to this backlog of unmet demand, the additional money in the system just made the price rises bigger.

Land is not scarce. We literally make as much of it as we want. What makes it scarce is legislation and zoning.

Look at Manhattan or Hong Kong. You just stack the homes and offices and stores on top of each other.

Interesting. Perhaps we are kind of already at that point? Isn't that what video games like MMORPGs or Fortnite are for? Where the bored young males get to accomplish great adventures , build and show off their skills for status, compete and crush their enemies, and fulfill a sense of accomplishment.. all virtually?

They wouldn’t be running windows on the Apple Silicon macs though, just the intel ones.

I am surprised the effect of Pets isn't studied or mentioned more. Anecdotally, I have seen how Pets can work as a substitute for the biological drive to nurture and care for something.

Pets can be "Kids-lite" for many.

Well wouldn't natural selection favor a predisposition to have kids over a predisposition to not have kids? :)

I did a double take just to make sure this wasn't an article on The Onion.

People who have fond memories of playing Trade Wars when they were younger should check out EVE Online (https://www.eveonline.com/)

There are enough similarities that I would find it hard to believe that EVE Online was not, at the very least, influenced by Trade Wars.

Does anyone know why this approach would be preferred over the use of VAT (Value added tax) instead of a corporate profit tax?

I recall a US presidential candidate in the most recent election cycle mentioning this as the solution to the current corporate tax avoidance problem. In fact it was a major part of his campaign.

I am not very knowledgeable of the downsides of a VAT approach and how it could be gamed, but what he seemed to say did make sense to me. The idea was to tax the value created in the location it was created. I suppose the way you could game that system was to somehow show that no (or very little) value was created in the US?

Would moving to taking a small percentage of revenue solve this? A federal sales tax that is included in the price of products that cannot be avoided. Sure the argument against this may be that they will just pass the increased costs down to the consumer, but why wouldn't the same would happen if the corporations start having to pay more taxes in general .. whether on their profits or on something else?

I am not at all well informed about this but I imagined a Dyson swarm would sort of grow and evolve organically over time. Not as an end goal in themselves.

For example, if you start building space habitats (even if they are enclosed cylinders such that they hold an atmosphere and provide gravity via rotation) you need to put them somewhere. It makes sense to throw them in orbit around the star at some optimal distance (for example at 1AU +/- some amount), if you continue to put more and more such habitats around a star in similar orbits over time, in sufficient numbers, wouldn't they start to resemble a Dyson swarm?

You do not need actual disruptions in supply to create a shortage. The threat of a disruption or a shortage for such a critical commodity can create a situation that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy (short term).

That is what can often create bank runs and created the "great toilet paper shortage of 2020".

Also imagine a boarding like this occurring at night. Sure night vision goggles are ubiquitous at this point, but it is still going to be a smaller/stealthier approach compared to a helicopter.

Also boardings can be done safely in far more situations, much further out to sea. You can carry a few of these on pretty much any patrol boat, a helicopter needs a take off/landing site and has an operating distance.

Yeah that is the part I do not understand.

Isn't there a law at sea where if you find an abandoned ship, it is basically yours? Perhaps this law doesn't apply in Egyptian national waters?

If he is the legal guardian of the ship, why wouldn't he be able to just sell it for profit and move on? Was it just that there would be no buyer for it, even to scrap it? Or could there have been fines/liens on that ship such that no one would want to buy it? If that is the case it seems odd that he couldn't himself abandon the ship to the lien holders.

I, personally am ambivalent on this subject. I see many signs that support the narrative of a west in decline while also seeing signs that it still has plenty of innovation and strength still left in it.

The center of technological innovation still resides here in the west.

In the west the industrial and technological prowess are demonstrated through its corporations. For a recent example, look at the speed of development, and efficacy of the vaccines developed in the West compared to the ones developed in China. Beating the west by creating a better vaccine, faster would have been like the Moon landing in terms of raising China's prestige and stature.

SpaceX, despite being only a mid sized company in the US, has a space program that is more advanced that any nation on Earth. Companies like Boston Robotics and Waymo continue to sprout up in the US.

In the event of a total war situation, the west would have a better chance of calling upon the expertise and knowledge of companies like these, much as it did in World War II.

However, things do change. China continues to rise. If it plays its cards right, it can become a rival to, and even eclipse the west. However the fact is, the west continues to be a center for innovation, that pulls in the smartest and brightest from all over the world. People from everywhere, including China, continue to immigrate to it and bring new blood to its competitive economic engine. Feeding the creative destruction of economic and technological innovation. China does not yet have this. It's corporations sit in service of their bureaucracy, its public discourse and innovation is hampered by its great firewall.

A Chinese proverb comes to mind - "We'll see"

Unfortunately, for the last few years I have noticed more and more people no longer take government inflation data very seriously. Here are two (I am sure there are more) reasons why:

Housing, Health and Education.. these very basic needs have consistently outstripped official inflation numbers. Specifically on the US coasts. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the cost of housing is completely left out of that inflation number. Which in my opinion is kind of silly.

The formula for the index used considers substitutions. So for example, let's say Wool gets expensive, they expect you to substitute it for acrylic. If beef gets expensive, they expect you to substitute it for chicken or turkey, and so on. This isn't the reality people _feel_. For example, I for one, would realize I am no longer able to afford wool socks, and have to make do with acrylic socks. In essence, feeling poorer than I did before.

Why would we use lithium ion batteries?

I would imagine the approach to store the energy would be to use the energy from solar panels to do work that can be used to produce electricity later.

For example, you could use solar energy to pump water back uphill to flow down through a hydro electric dam later.

Even if it isn't the most efficient, in the long run it would likely provide the best scalability and least long term environmental impact. Once you have the facility in place, the same water could be pumped uphill to flow back down a million times over with the only overhead replacing water lost through evaporation and maintaining the facility.

Am I missing something that makes such an approach unfeasible?

Home prices keep reaching new heights in some areas due to:

1) Migration. Immigration from outside the country, but also internal immigration within the country from less economically vibrant parts to more economically vibrant regions.

2) Falling interest rates keeping the monthly mortgage payment the same or lower despite higher principals

3) Expectations that the price trend for homes will continue to look like the past. This expectation can lead to people buying more housing than they would normally consume.

4) Shrinking household sizes. You have gone from an average household size of 3.33 in the 1960s to an average household size of 2.53 today. That may not seem like much but you would need ~25% more housing today to accommodate the same population.

5) Larger house sizes. From a median of about 1000 sq ft in 1950 to 2300 sq ft today.

The above can combine to keep pushing up house prices in some areas (as we see in the US) even as the population growth of a country stagnates.

I am not an expert on this.. but here is a theory. Broker's are incentivized to have the short squeeze stop.

Someone please correct me if I am (or how I am) wrong with the following:

Bob is a broker.

Jack comes along buys 100 shares of X.

Bob lends those 100 shares of X to Amy to sell short.

Amy sells it short. Price shoots up.. Amy says “oh crap.. Sorry bill. Simply cannot buy back those shares. I am bankrupt. I physically do not have the money to do so.

Jack will still expect Bob the broker to make sure his 100 shares of X are there one way or the other.

Bob the broker has to buy back those shares it lent out to Amy so that Jack the account holder is still able to sell/trade their shares.

Exactly this. They know there will be lawsuits and they know there might be SEC fines, but they are betting that those two will total up to be less than the billions it would cost them to cover a short position at $500-$600 per share.

The question I have is, can this be prosecuted criminally and can those in charge be threatened with actual jail time from this?